Favorite Schools

Favorite Teams

Greater New Orleans

Change Region

comments

Former Mayor Marc Morial hands New Orleans Urban League a $1.5 million job-training grant

urban league grant 7.2.2013.jpg

From left to right, Urban League program participant Devin Jones, Deputy Mayor Judy Reese Morse, Urban League program participant Kenneth Lewis, business owner Christina Couvillion, Interim Urban League of Greater New Orleans President Ericka McConduit and National Urban League President Marc Morial.

The National Urban League handed its New Orleans' affiliate $1.5 million Tuesday, a step former Mayor Marc Morial celebrated as a bridge to bring low-income or marginalized residents closer to sustained, long-term employment.

Morial, now the National Urban League's president and CEO, said the Urban League of Greater New Orleans had successfully competed for the grant, joining 49 other cities that are sharing in a $100 million project to improve their labor forces as the nation steps out of the Great Recession.

"We see businesses beginning to regain their footing again," he said, "but we also see important parts of every urban community in America being left behind. Too many people who have the great desire and zeal to work unable to find the opportunity."

The Urban League plans to use the money to train young adults for employment, provide more funding for its Women's Business Resource Center, and encourage inner-city teenagers to finish high school and continue on with their education, in either college or trade school.

Morial said the grant, which is part of the Urban League's "Jobs Rebuild America" campaign, comprises donations from several corporate sponsors, including Chevron, Goldman Sachs, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and BP America, and funding from the federal government.

Deputy Mayor Judy Reese Morse, Mayor Mitch Landrieu's representative at the ceremonial handing-over of an oversized check at the Urban League's headquarters on Carondelet Street, blamed the city's high level of violence, in part, on the lack of opportunities for many young men to find work.

"Mayor Landrieu has made this clear: There is no more important issue than changing the culture of violence to a culture of life, prosperity and opportunity," she said, "and we know a huge part of that effort is all about jobs."